Compact Jazz

Mostly drawn from The Birth of a Band, Vols. 1 & 2 and The Great Wide World of Quincy Jones, here we have a sampler of Quincy Jones' brassy, classy, unquenchably swinging big band of 1959 — plus a couple of tracks from the 1960 Paris band, and one from an unidentified Fender bass-driven 1963 band. The arrangements definitely have a signature sound, even the charts that Q didn't write, and all but one hover succinctly around the three-minute mark (already the future VP of Mercury had his finger on the pulse of what would get airplay). Another Jones trait that would carry into the future was his ability to get stars like Clark Terry, Phil Woods, Zoot Sims, Harry Edison, Art Farmer, Lee Morgan, Kenny Burrell, Milt Hinton, and Benny Golson to populate the ranks of his bands. In the absence of the original albums (briefly available early in the CD era), this sampler will have to do, although a number of choice tunes (like the great chart of Golson's "Along Came Betty") are missing and missed. ~ Richard S. Ginell, Rovi